Lifelong Knicks’ Fan Mike Greenberg Reacts to New York’s 1st Title Since 1973

Mike Greenberg woke up not knowing how to be himself. "Who am I if my teams don't suck?" he asked. After more than five decades, the Knicks are NBA champions, and a lifelong fan admitted he has no idea how to function in that world.

Greenberg laid out the roots. Both his parents were from the Bronx, so baseball meant the Yankees, and he saw them win the World Series in 1977 and 1978. But baseball was never in his blood the way basketball and football were. In his family, they lived and died with the Knicks and the Jets, speaking names like Namath, DeBusschere, Bradley, Reed, and Frazier as if they were gods. He's not old enough to have seen those Knicks at their peak, only at the tail ends of their careers.

So when it finally happened, he didn't know what to do. He regrets skipping San Antonio, where friends got to share the celebration in person. Instead he was alone in his apartment, his wife asleep, when the game ended and he felt his building shake. He opened the windows and heard the city yelling. Then came the existential question about who he is now.

A day and a half of thinking led him to a clear conclusion. This is an easy team to like, and not just from a New York perspective. He wondered whether fans across the country feel the same. The Knicks, he said, are a collection of comparatively ego-less players, almost all of them cast away by other franchises, who came together and truly played as a team. That's what everyone wants from sports, which is why he's glad this group is the one to finally break through.

The photograph that got Rich was Patrick Ewing holding the trophy, his wounds finally cauterized, standing next to the kid he's known since age two because he was teammates with Rick Brunson. Greenberg met it with his own memory. He and his brother grew up in a building that didn't allow dogs, so their pets were hamsters named Bernard, for Bernard King, and Patrick, for Patrick Ewing. Seeing Ewing finally win sent him back to watching on channel 9 as Marv Albert and Butch Beard called games, to Hubie Brown's teams finally getting good, to Bill Cartwright before the Charles Oakley trade, to Truck Robinson, and to Bernard King, who Greenberg considers the best player in the league at that time.

When your team never wins it all, he explained, you learn to celebrate less than championships. John Starks is a god in the city for once dunking left-handed over Michael Jordan and Scottie Pippen at the same time, even though the Knicks led that series two games to none and lost in six. Bernard King taking that great Celtics team to seven games counts too. Those near-misses were the closest thing to celebration over 50 years.

Greenberg also gave James Dolan, a frequent and often justified target of scorn, credit for one thing: keeping former players part of the franchise. Seeing Ewing, Allan Houston, Walt Frazier, and the rest as much a part of this as the current team, he said, created a bond across generations. Everything about it, even from a Knick-centric view, has felt very good.